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Typical Ukrainian Developer in 2017 [Part 1]

Even if you’re working as a developer, it’s always interesting to find out what a typical developer looks like, especially in Ukraine. A popular Ukrainian website for developers, dou.ua, conducted a survey, asking developers about their work experience, preferences, and their personal profile like education, family and pets, sport activities, etc.

Today we’d like to talk about the numbers that could describe Ukrainian developers’ choice related to work in 2017.

The average age hasn’t changed comparing to the numbers from the last year’s survey. The youngest specialists (up to 25 years old) are front-end developers and non-technical specialists (such as HR, PR, Sales, Marketing). The eldest (more than 35 years old) are executives (top managers), project managers, and system administrators.

Source: dou.ua

Every year we notice that more and more women are working in the IT sector. This year the number of women has increased by 2%, so it’s 20% now. Almost half of all women has less than 2 years of work experience. For the most part, women are working as QA specialists (26%), web developers (23%) and non-technical specialists (21%), such as HR, PR, Sales and Marketing.

Source: dou.ua

66% of IT specialists are living in the top 3 IT cities of Ukraine – Kyiv, Kharkiv and Lviv. The share of Kyiv is decreasing every year and today it’s only 39%. This means that the IT market is developing in smaller cities as well.

Source: dou.ua

Most IT specialists work as developers (53%), QA specialists (14%), non-technical specialists (6%), project managers (5%), system administrators (3%), business analysts, designers and others. In average, one QA specialist evaluates products that are developed by 4 developers.

Source: dou.ua

38% of all developers have less than 2 years of professional work experience. Almost a third part of all sysadmins have more than 10 years of work experience, and beginners (less than a half of year) is only 4%. The number of developers with more than 10 years of experience is 13%.

Source: dou.ua

This year the number of Junior Developers (27%) hasn’t changed comparing to the previous year (26%). Most developers are working as Middle specialists (38%). Most Middle specialists have 3-5 years of experience in IT, while most Senior specialists have 5-10 years of experience.

Source: dou.ua

Most Ukrainian developers don’t change their employers so often. 28% of all respondents have been working only in a single company, while 27% have changed their company only at once. 19% of respondents with 3-5 years of experience in IT haven’t changed their first employer at all.

Source: dou.ua

Ukrainian developers have various factors for choosing the IT sphere as their job specialization. Most specialists choose IT because they like technologies (79%). 65% of Juniors chose IT because of high salaries, while only 37% of Senior developers mentioned salaries as the reason for choosing IT.

Source: dou.ua

An answer to the question “What is important for you when choosing a job?” remained unchanged since last year, as most Ukrainian developers pay attention to salary (74% of all respondents), interesting tasks (64%), opportunities for professional growth (59%), and good working conditions (30%).

Source: dou.ua

83% of all developers like their current project and tasks. IT professionals are mostly interested in working in startups and product companies.

Source: dou.ua

62% of all respondents say that they are satisfied with their salaries. The most satisfied are top managers, software developers, and QA specialists. All this is possible due to competitive salaries in the IT market that brings most revenues in foreign currency.

Source: dou.ua

Almost all developers work in their company’s office (77%). Interesting thing is that every fifth employee of a startup works remotely, while only 1 employee out of 20, that work for some product and outsourcing companies, doesn’t work in-house.

Source: dou.ua

Top managers and designers are the most-hardworking people and spend more than 40-60 hours in the office every week.

Source: dou.ua

Most IT specialists are planning their future. So 54% of all developers are dreaming about becoming a Senior developer or a team lead in 3-5 years. 9% of developers, project managers and designers are thinking about their personal startup project.

Source: dou.ua

Also all respondents had to answer an interesting question – “What would you do if you didn’t have to earn money?” 42% answered that they would still work but fewer hours. 33% would still work in IT just for fun. Only 13% would change their job.

That’s the first part of our blog post about a typical Ukrainian developer in 2017. The second one will be about personal preferences and qualities of Ukrainian developers.